Lords AI Committee Written Evidence

Dr Simon Beard submitted Written Evidence to the United Kingdom's House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence. This response was written with additional input from Dr Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Dr Shahar Avin and Haydn Belfield of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), Martina Kunz at the Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), and Andrew Ware of the University of New Hampshire.

Our sister organisation the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) also submitted Written Evidence, primarily written by Executive Director Dr Stephen Cave, with additional input from CFI and CSER staff and collaborators.

Dr Simon Beard's Executive Summary:

In the first section of this response, we focus on the benefits that artificial intelligence (AI) could bring and argue that not only the size, but also the distribution, of these benefits should be of primary concern to the Committee when weighing up the potential of developments in AI. This section primarily addresses the question “Who in society is gaining the most from the development and use of artificial intelligence and data? Who is gaining the least? How can potential disparities be mitigated?”

In the second section, we focus on the potential for future advances in AI to pose catastrophic risk. This section primarily addresses the question “What are the ethical implications of the development and use of artificial intelligence? How can any negative implications be resolved?”

In the third section, we focus on the governance challenge - how governments might intervene to mitigate risks and the potential for government intervention to make this problem worse as well as better. This section primarily addresses the question “What role should the Government take in the development and use of artificial intelligence in the United Kingdom? Should artificial intelligence be regulated? If so, how?”

The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk is an interdisciplinary research centre at CRASSH within the University of Cambridge dedicated to the study and mitigation of risks that could lead to human extinction or civilisational collapse.